The "ABCs of BBM": Round 965! (Rules in first post)

[Meryl]

Highway 742, running south from Canmore, Alberta, links a number of sites from the movie, including those nicknamed Mountain Highway/Riding Lake, Jack Ascending, Gonna Snow Lake and Campsite #2.

[memento]

"Brokeback" is a masterfully made film - that much has never been questioned. The issue with the film has always been grounded in whether America is ready to accept - without question or awkward smiles - a gay love story.   

'Brokeback' stays vital

[southendmd]

Annie P. tells us that the naissance of the idea for Brokeback Mountain occured at the Mint Bar in Sheridan, Wyoming.

[Fran]

In "Climbing Brokeback Mountain," Diana Ossana writes about how seeing Brokeback Mountain  in finished form at a private screening at the Loft Theatre in Tucson, Arizona, was "a kind of out-of-body experience" for her:

"In spite of what I already knew about Brokeback Mountain, I was not at all prepared for the emotional tidal wave that swept over me:  there I sat, having lived with these characters for over eight years -- they had been more real to me at times than the corporeal -- and I felt as if I were being introduced to them for the first time.  After the credits rolled and the lights came up, everyone just sat there.  The women were crying; the men were silent.  No one spoke until we wandered outside."

[Meryl]

On February 10, 2006, James Hagengruber wrote on SpokesmanReview.com:

Conservative pundits, including Bill O'Reilly, predicted "Brokeback Mountain" would flop in cowboy country.

Not so, according to the film's distributor. Although this isn't exactly the wild West, "Brokeback Mountain" opened in first place at many area theaters, including sellout or near-sellout crowds in Spokane and small-town Idaho theaters in Sandpoint and Moscow.

[southendmd]

Rockyford's rodeo grounds stood in for Childress, TX.

=comment=
green + red = brown

[memento]

William Arnold of the Seattle Post Intelligencer wrote an article entitled "Gay-themed 'Brokeback Mountain' celebrates the diversity in human nature." Article 

[Meryl]

Like their sheep-herding counterparts in real-life Wyoming, Jack and Ennis drove their ewes up above the timberline into the "great flowery meadows and the coursing, endless wind."

[southendmd]

Utah's theatre snub can't bridle "Brokeback Mountain"

The Megaplex 17 at Jordan Commons in the Salt Lake City suburb of Sandy decided to pull director Ang Lee's cowboy love story at the last minute on Thursday night, despite having agreed to play the picture. The theater is owned by Larry H. Miller, who also owns the Utah Jazz, a National Basketball Association team.

"It's the most despicable practice that any exhibitor can do," Focus' head of distribution, Jack Foley, told Box Office Mojo. "It was a flagrant dismissal of a commitment, and without even a phone call. So I'm not in business with him anymore. It's a breach of contract. It's unethical. We can sue him."

Calls to the Megaplex 17 resulted in "no comments" in regards to why Brokeback Mountain was yanked. "You're not going to get any comment from us on that," said Dale Harvey, General Manager for Megaplex Theatres.

--boxofficemojo, January 9, 2006

[memento]

NEW YORK (AP) _ The New York City Opera commissioned Charles Wuorinen to compose an opera based on "Brokeback Mountain," the 1997 short story by Annie Proulx that became the basis for a 2005 movie that won three Academy Awards.

The opera is scheduled to premiere in spring 2013, City Opera said Sunday. It will be City Opera's second Wuorinen premiere, following "Haroun and the Sea of Stories," which was based on a Salman Rushdie novel and opened in October 2004.

"Ever since encountering Annie Proulx's extraordinary story I have wanted to make an opera on it, and it gives me great joy that Gerard Mortier and New York City Opera have given me the opportunity to do so," Wuorinen said in a statement.

"Brokeback Mountain" is a cowboy romance about two ranch-hand buddies who start a homosexual affair when they meet on the fictional mountain in 1963.